Christopher

On 2/22/2019 at 12:26 AM, Sean Waters said:

Mind you if a PC came to me with a build that included a planetary level out of combat Danger Sense they would never be seen or heard from again, and quite rightly too.  Well, that or it would just be me bombarding them with constant reports about Avi in Mumbai who is about to cross the road and so is in grave danger, and Kevin in Adelaide who is, well, in Australia and so is in grave danger. 

On 2/22/2019 at 1:11 AM, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

I'd warn them that it's a lot of information and most of it won't be helpful.  I'd tell them that they mostly tune it out, but they should give me a list of people they pay attention to danger to and other circumstances like sudden "danger clusters" that will make them pay attention so I can know what to tell them about.  

As a general rule, Hero Powers (including Talents) do not have downsides other then written in the text, even if they are logically founded. Unless you take an actuall limitations of c ourse.

With Megascale running you do not kill yourself by running into Mosquitoes.

Nor does your speed explode the Atmosphere.

Filtering is thus implied, as with your normal sight and hearing.

Not accidentally filtering ou the real dangers is what the Sense Roll is there for.

On 2/21/2019 at 11:40 PM, PamelaIsley said:

I'm really shocked that APG specifically mentions this use of Possession (ghost merging with someone) and does not help you build it at all.

I do not have the Bestiary, but I t hink Posession itself is only defined in APG I 74.

On 2/22/2019 at 1:18 AM, Sean Waters said:

I also do not really understand why it is a -1 limitation.  It sounds better than the base power, really, and even if it does have those limitations still in place, it is probably as good.

Mind Transfer is a -1, because the Victim takes control of your body.

Think "The Great Brain Robbery" from Justice League Unlimited.

Normal posession is more like the (poorly named) "Mind Transfer Jutsu" from Naruto.

1 hour ago, Lucius said:

What happens when a Cosmic Attack meets  a Cosmic Defense? 

I would asume normal attack/defense handling?
Of course that raises the question how that part works to begin with in Gurps

4 hours ago, specks said:

For bypass p103 of the GURPS Character (4th edition) book explains it as:

Attack does negate targets protection; innate attack ignores DR

For block (same page) your desolid power can bypass barriers not protected by cosmic protection.

 

Hope that clarifies ?

Please sepcify what you mean with "Attack does negate targets protection"

Does it ignore the protection for this attack? (aka skip the defenses?)

That sounds more like AVAD, including the NND variant of AVAD (in 5E a seperate advantage)
Does it turn off the proteection for a while? If so, how long?

That sounds more like Dispel, Drain, Supress. Maybe some APG uses of Change Environment.

"For block (same page) your desolid power can bypass barriers not protected by cosmic protection."

That part as least might be partially doable. Desolidificaiton in Hero is a all or nothing power so it might not map that well to GURPS Desolid power. There is however the "Affects Desolid" Advantage.

However Teleport has elements like this too. The Barrier power - as well as normal walls in bases - can be given the "Cannot Be Escaped With Teleportation (+¼)" Advantage:
" Ordinarily, a character can escape from an englobing Barrier by Teleporting out of it. Characters cannot Teleport out of an englobing Barrier with this Advantage — unless the Teleportation is
Armor Piercing, which cancels out this Advantage. (Characters may buy multiple levels of Cannot Be Escaped With Teleportation to prevent this if desired, or multiple levels of Armor Piercing to counteract that.)"

7 hours ago, Ximenez said:

So Mental Entangle costs 22.5pts per 1d6, and if you hit someone with it, they're trapped permanently unless they have a mental attack power of some kind. That makes it impossible for most characters to escape, and thus very unbalancing...but I haven't used it in a campaign. Am I missing something? 

For slightly above 66 AP, you get a 3D6 entangle with 3 Defenses. That is the result of applying 1 1/4 advatages to any attack power.

Meanwhile at a mere 20 EGO; the dragon rolls 4D6 for 2 END to break out:

" The victim uses EGO, not STR, to escape a Mental Paralysis. He rolls 1d6 per 5 points of EGO; this costs 1 END per 10 Character Points of EGO used, and he can Push his EGO for this purpose. He may use his Casual EGO (half of
his EGO) to break out of weak Mental Paralysis attacks effortlessly"

As usual, pushing this End costing operation is an option.

Both rolls count like "normal damage" (i.e., count the body like you would on a normal damage attack).

Mental defense does not add to that by default:

" Mental Defense neither adds to the character’s EGO for purposes of breaking out of, nor offers any other protection against, Mental Paralysis. Characters can apply a -½ Limitation, Mental Defense Adds To EGO, to Mental Paralysis. That means Mental Defense adds to EGO, point for point, in calculating the EGO a character may exert to break free"

Entangle is known to have some abuse potential. One of the APG's actually discusses weak entangles with the sole purpose of lowering the targets DCV.

This set of modifiers might even require a warning label.

Allowing Metnal Paralysis in the game without having the boss design account for it was a mistake. You now know it and can remove it or account or it.

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I'm a super marksman, government sniper assassin with eleven skill levels with this particular weapon, a scope that has nine more skill levels built in, and I'm firing from twelve feet away.  

The bulk of the damage potential of sniping comes from the ability to makie a Aimed Shoot at a unaware target (1/2 DCV, 1/2 Hit Location penalty, no option to abort).

If a defense can negate that it would be bad. But most defenses (combat luck included) does not work that way. It adds plain old rDefenses. And that this kind of extra damage, a conditional defense is unlikely to make a big difference.

At short ranges you are actually prone to over-penetration and not hitting the right spot. And the target can see and try to dodge you.

While I agree that adding randomness is propably a bad idea, I doubt we can do more then warn people of it. Some things you just have to experience yourself to understand. Or are something you do not care about.

On 2/19/2019 at 7:30 PM, Christougher said:

Flora tends to be very limited, Fauna is mostly lizard like, and most are some degree of toxic or poisonous.

On 2/19/2019 at 8:33 PM, Christopher said:

I would have to look at teh Tier Zoo to see how Reptiles defend themself/how the hunters overcome the defenses.

According to this Episode of Tier Zoo, Reptiles tend to have - due to a lack of a better term - gimicky builds. They all have 1-3 wierd gimicks, with Venoms just being a more often thought about (only exception being the monitor Lizard):

While those Gimicks work on a evolutionary level, they will not hold up against a tool and magic wielding intelligent species. But it could inform you about clothing. The "shoot blood out of your eyes" thing might get culture to like facemasks that block that.

Also there have been some pretty broken Reptiles in the past, for environmental reasons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6yY9HKVmfA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vny05XYFpT0

49 minutes ago, Sean Waters said:

There are some genres in which guns are largely useless against central characters.  The Matrix has been mentioned, but you could also bring up Equilibrium or even Star Wars - Jedi rarely have to worry about blaster bolts. 

Those might be cases of being built on totally different powerlevels.

Zion Citizen are way past the normal human ability level.

Agents are a step aboe that, by having never been human.

And Neo is above that, because he is the choosen one. And possibly not only the choosen one for this itteration of the Matrix, but the choosen one that finally brought peace (it is entirely possible the Oracle had this kind of longterm plan/vision/hope).

And with Jedi, look at Attack of the Clones.

A lot of Droids or one casually shooting Yango Fett can kill the average jedi padawan and even some weaker masters.

Against a Obi Wan or Mace Windu however he is not that strong.

5 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I wouldn't call what Daredevil has danger sense, not in the classic meaning of the word.  He's just got 360 targeting hearing, so he can pick up anything around him but won't necessarily.

I agree that Daredevil is a case of shifting the targetting sense. Note that some interpretations go one further and actually move it into the Radio or even Special Group. Just because hearing is still to - flashable? - in a normal setting.

The rule to buy back sight (in order to afford a alternative targetting sense easier) pretty much was added to 6E for Daredevil builds. Or at least that is how I read it.

The only examples for Danger Sense I can think of are:
Spiderman. Wich has seen some pretty big abuses of the power by writers.

Like in "The Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes S02E22 New Avengers". He had to disarm a time machine and lacked any skill to do it. Tampering the wrong way could have caused the whole thing to explode. Writer solution? If he planned on pulling something that that triggerd his spider sense. So the Spidersense was used to offset lack of any skill in this instance. Of course allowing players to use it like that is a huge issue.

The Victory Webcomic that I linked above. It also has a rare example of city/planet wide danger sense. And seems to have way less abuses by the writer, because there is only one and he had planned that ability from the get go.

7 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

You and I are on the same page on placing little value on going first, but I see this in both Hero and d20 players, so ours is not the only viewpoint.  In a WIld West game (high lethality and low defenses), going first seems a lot more important.  If we can buy DEX for 2 points each,, or DEX without initiative for 1 point (effectively, +1 to all DEX rolls for +5 points, and +5 initiative for +5 points), we can exercise our preferences, as can those who value going first. 

Going first can be very important.

Indeed the optional combat maneuver Hipshoot (6E2 87) exists for that purpose.

Then APG I 169 has the Optional Hurry maneuver.

And APG II 67 has the optional "Showdown" rule if you want to resolve the Gunslinger duel in even more detail.

At that much special rules, it is save to say some players prefer acting first. There is even a chance that the "I do not care" only comes from not having those optional rules in play/in memory. I tend to not value things I get no active decision for as well.

2 hours ago, PamelaIsley said:

Shadow Form Possession:  (Total: 245 Active Cost, 119 Real Cost) Shadow Form (Desolidification , Persistent (+1/4), Inherent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (80 Active Points); Always On (-1/2), Unified Power (-1/4) (Real Cost: 46)) PLUS Shadow Possession (Possession (Mind Control Effect Roll 100; Telepathy Effect Roll 70), Merging (+0), Projection (+0), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (165 Active Points); Linked (Shadow Form; Lesser Power can only be used when character uses greater Power at full value; -1/2), No Range (-1/2), Unified Power (-1/4) (Real Cost: 73)) 

There is one important rule for Limitations: "A Limitation that doesn’t limit the character isn’t worth any bonus!"

I would still say in this case, Linked is a -0.

Not only is there no downside (like Endurance cost) to keeping the Desolid on, there is actualy now way to turn it off (always on).

Normal "Always on" powers at least have the option of being drained or supressed. But inherent blocks that one angle as well.

2 hours ago, PamelaIsley said:

This is what I've come up with for my possessing Shadow.  Honestly, I should have just treated this power like a plot device. 

It can still be very usefull to have it statted out. You never know when a player will something unexpected, like trying to block it by giving Mental Defenses to all possible targets.

I can not rememember in wich book I saw it, but I once saw "Mind Link, Radio Group, also affected as Hearing" used as a form of hard to break encryption for Radio communicatin. Something that would need Telepathy to break into by raw. Or listening to the speaker (also affected as hearing).

So treating it like a point to point radio network is not wrong. Maybe even a form of VPN connection over the unsecure "thought space"? Maybe the equivalent of putting in physical wires that can stretch and are only visible to peopel with Mental Awareness?

APG I 169 has some specific rulings on mind link, including cases where one person (not nessearily the one with Mind Link power) acts as a relay/switch.

On 2/20/2019 at 3:05 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

Hwere is the roster of all 48 CGI episodes from back in the day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ReBoot_episodes

Of these, the ones I remember Hexadecimal being the most scary were:
Season 2, Episode 5, "Painted Windows".. Hexadecimal basically corrupts reality for artistic purposes

Season 3  "show down" shows that hexadecimal is still a force to be reckoned with, even as Megabyte has taken over mainframe in Bob's absence. Upon Bob;'s return she captures bob, to get him to do her a favor. 

 

Interactions as I would expeect them.

Still no 0 END, but her being just OP. Fighting her is about as futile as Bob trying to exit cyberspace and fight the users.

The closest Archetype from Champions 6E that would fit is the "Prankster".

In the Instant Plot generator, she is either the source of a Mac Guffin. Or the 'villain' of a "Man vs Nature" storyline.

13 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Of course, the raises questions of "danger payload" (at least, it has for me in the past) : no amount of "dive for cover" is getting you out of the blast radius of seven Megatron fuel/air bomb; I give a _rip_ what the maneuver says. 

In general it is poor sportsmanship of a GM to make a scenario that boils down to:
You either have Danger Sense and make the roll.

or

Your character is dead without any way for you to change it.

If the "danger" is some form of Megascale Area of Effect attack (or anytthing you could not dodge with a Abort action), there should be a way to deal with it even if you are unaware. I mean we have developed missile warning Systems for a reason. Either danger sense does not apply (because everyone will be warned of it) or making the Danger Sense roll makes the following challenge easier (you happen to be close to a emergency shelter/not in the middle of a panicking crowd).

The attack from surprise is also rather unlikely to be a "instant kill" attack. By default at least, Hero is not that deadly. The character creation is way too complex for such a character turnover.

8 hours ago, Sean Waters said:

Also, right, why the flippety flip is Science a Background Skill and not an Intellect Skill?

 

Damnit.

Because in the average game, it is a Background Skill. It will not have a lot of impact on the game, so that is why it is "only" a background one.

As usual, if you play in a exceptional setting then science may have to be moved to a "foreground" skill. Possibly even split up into subskills.

41 minutes ago, Christougher said:

They prefer hot and dry climates, homeland is a large desert with volcanoes at one edge.  Cultural magic is fire-based. 

A bladed weapon - propably with a Curved blade - seems to be the desert thing.

The Tigrans from Age of Wonders have stuff like the "Shredder" as the primary ranged unit. They also like fire magic.

Arabic weapons are more known to have curved blades, but that was in large part due to them prefering Horse Warfare (it is a light cavalry weapon).

Still in Fanatasy you are not bound to realism.

Volcanic implies good metal working. Volcanoes move rare minerals to the surface and they are closely related to fire.

Obsidian as an additional/alternative material is a good idea. However melting full on blades requries quite some skill. Something simpler like knives and this Club thing might work better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl(It might be the original "piece of wood with a nail in it")

But for similar reasons, they do not want heavy metal armors. They conduct heat pretty good and make it harder to move in rough terrain.

Both lava and desert prefer flowing robes, that do not overheat the wearer. Heat management might become important. Think classical desert clothing or tusken raiders.

The material should be fire resistant.

Something way more dangerous then Lava however are Pyroclastic Flows. So it would help if they could make their clothing temporarily resistant to having the hot ash flow in. It does not need to be full on life support.

56 minutes ago, Christougher said:

Flora tends to be very limited, Fauna is mostly lizard like, and most are some degree of toxic or poisonous.

I would have to look at teh Tier Zoo to see how Reptiles defend themself/how the hunters overcome the defenses.

Wood based stuff falls flat, both from rarity of material and the likelyhood of it catching fire. Also most weapons that require a single piece of wood might be hard to get (unless you get fitting bones). That affects spears, axes, most clubs and even bows.

59 minutes ago, Christougher said:

Culturally, they tend to be self serving and manipulative.  Probably small or concealable, but being able to strike the opponent from behind is good.

Then it is fitting that they have posionous animals as their normal food.

Farming: An interesting aspect of Volcanoes is that their land is highly fertile. Wich was usually the reason people setteled near them.

But if the area is dry, it might not be suiteable for that. Still volcanic soil/ash might be an export.

47 minutes ago, RDU Neil said:

So... to the rest of my post, your statement here means you are ok with Danger Sense alerting you to a drone pilot on the other side of the planet?

The Drone pilot can be about as far away a the General that ordered the Operation. Or the guy that hired the sniper trying to kill me. Either of those is pointless to consider and can be on the far side of the Universe for all the good it does me.

The attack comming from the Drone/Special Forces Team/Sniper right here is what maters.

47 minutes ago, RDU Neil said:

Or say, someone pressing a button on the other side of the planet and launching a missile... Danger Sense would have a flat roll, even at the most basic level? 

Generlized Danger to area. Same way Animals can detect a comming earthquake.

Again the guy pushing the button does not mater. The missile hitting right here soon does.

And that one will not be solved with a OCV vs DCV contest anyway, so it hardly maters.

1 hour ago, RDU Neil said:

I totally get how Skill Level pricing is at odds with Characteristic pricing. My main issue though, is that they are too cheap at Heroic levels, and too powerful. I've noted PCs that are no longer in the DEX war business, have slipped into the Skill Level war business, because "not missing" is so damn important. AND because what look innocuous on the page... +2 here, +2 there... often stack very quickly and easily, and can get out of hand. 

While it is often ignored in favor of more prominent caps/guidelines (like OCV or DC), there is actually a Skill Cap in the rules too.

And once again the rule of thumb is: It does not mater how you got to that level. Only that you did.

5 minutes ago, RDU Neil said:

This is back to what I said before... the rules contradict. If something is "too far away" my senses can't perceive it, but Range mods are the only way "too far" is defined in the game... do they apply or not?

If the attacker is so far the Range Modifiers on Sight/Hearing/Other applicable sense make it unuseable, you get a Danger Sense roll with no modifiers.

If the dangers is not to far, you make a sense roll with the Modifiers. Wich acts as a complimentary roll to your dangers sense roll.

5 minutes ago, RDU Neil said:

IF your interpretation is correct it seems this could be amazingly clear if they wanted it to be.

"Danger Sense is a PER Roll but not subject to any normal PER Roll Penalties (like range, etc.) EXCEPT for those generated by opposing Stealth rolls. What Danger Sense perceives is a general sense of immediate threat and where it is coming from. A successful Danger Sense roll negates any "Surprised" penalties to DCV."

Isn't there a saying about "Hindsight being 20/20"?

11 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

And you may be right.  I'd have to check.  But I seem to recall (and again, I could be way off; I haven't sat down and read 4e for a long time) that there was a separate adder or advantage for detecting danger to others. 

The ability to detect dangers to others is required to detect the dangers to others on a larger scale.

34 minutes ago, Lucius said:

I don't know about anyone else but I never interpreted the "Range" Adders in Danger Sense as meaning that you otherwise couldn't detect a danger from faraway. I always interpreted it as meaning you could detect danger to someone OTHER THAN YOURSELF within the defined area. 

I think Victory is a example of this power. They even call it his "Danger Sense":

http://victoryadventures.webcomic.ws/comics/17#.XGtaELhCd3g

Okay, found the original series on youtube. Intersting. Episode 2 had a racing game where the vehicles changed every lap, like Marion Kart would have as of version 7 (2011).

Any particular Episodes HexaDecimal is a relvant player in/that make you think she is 0 END build?

I mean she is extremely powerfull. Less then a Q from Star Trek. But at least on the level of Equinox, Spectre, Ghost Rider, Darkseid, Superman or the like.

She is an Avatar of chaos/change. A force of nature villain more then a conventional antagonist. She has to be out-tricked, not out fought.

2 hours ago, Badger said:

There was a live action version of reboot?

Yes, there was a action Reboot of ReBoot. 2 Seasons at least and you could watch it on Netflix.

But now I need to look for the Original Series.

6 hours ago, Toxxus said:

I feel like the +2 PD/ED for double-the-weight charts give us a good rule of thumb for stacking defenses.

 

Essentially the lesser defense has to be no more than 2 pts below the higher defense or it doesn't effectively add anything.

  

I do allow players to stack things like a chain shirt (5 PD/ED) with a steel breastplate (6 PD/ED) and for the low-low cost of the weight of both armors enjoy a total of 7 PD/ED in the double-covered areas.

  

By limiting the stacking to +1 pt it keeps things from getting out of control.  Plate Armor + 2 levels combat luck = 14 rPD/14 rED?  No thanks! 

I still think that "does not stack" rules are for RPG Systems that lack the concept of a cap.

Indeed I have seen many Systems that used to have "no Stacking" rules switch to caps, to finally have that problem reliably solved.

Shadowrun had issues with Magic and Cybernetics being combined. It could result in some pretty broken stuff, like the "Antitank Troll Archer Adpet".

But then they introduced the Limits for Skill Checks. Now it did not mater if you got 20 dies, as you could not get more then Y sucesses.

For weapons they introduced the Accuracy, wich limit the amount of damage you can add via high Skill Rolls. Got rid of adding all those Skill Dice to the Antitank Troll Bowshoot. And shootguns suddenly have a low accuracy cap as a tradeoff.

And afaik Attributes can not be buffed more then +4 over what you bought with Points, regardless of source.

D&D was notorious for all the kinds of Bonuses that would and would not stack. They had to list them all in the 3E and 3.5E GM Handbooks.

And then D&D 5E just introduced a hard cap of 20 for Attributes (30 on Monsters and Divine beings).

Hero has the advantage that we always had caps.

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

No cobble, and it works so well you want to keep an eye on it  . (think BBB yield sign) 

Both in 6E1 and 5E Character Creation Handbook, Danger Sense actually has a STOP sign for it working potentially too good.

And funny enough, I read the title as "Danger Sense the GM should have against allowing Danger Sense".

@RDU Neil: I am uncertain if you were usign 5E, 6E or earlier. But in both 5E and 6E the Talent seems similar down to the letter. But that is mostly due to Senses seemingly not changing at all between 5E and 6E. I got no information on 4E and earlier, however.

52 minutes ago, mallet said:

Re-reading Danger Sense (6th Ed.) I believe that the danger sense roll is not effected or modified by range, darkness, or any other modifiers that normally apply to PER rolls. You just make your roll at whatever you have it at (11-, 12-, or whatever). The only limit at the "base level" of it is that it is something that could be detected by your normal senses. A sniper could be seen with normal eye sight (even if this sniper is super far away on a building roof top) but an invisible, odorless gas wouldn't trigger danger sense (at base level) because the character couldn't see or smell it even if he/she was already engulfed by it. I think this because :

Quote

 

As noted above, most forms of Danger Sense
only let a character perceive dangers he could
perceive given his other Senses. The benefits to
this type of Danger Sense are (a) it doesn’t belong
to any Sense Group, and therefore works even
when the character’s other Senses are “blinded,”
inoperative, or subject to PER Roll penalties

 

 

That clearly states that PER Roll penalties or even darkness or blindness do not affect your Danger Sense roll.  

6 minutes ago, Toxxus said:

 

This is not the case.  There can be many situations in which your normal senses are simply incapable of detecting the danger you're in.

  

What if you're walking down the sidewalk and there is a bomb that was build into the pavement?  You can't see it or feel it with conventional senses, but danger sense might save you. 

 

What if an enemy sniper is a mile away targeting your hero with the new 1.5 caliber Super Sniper 5000?  You can't see the sniper with such massive range penalties, but your danger sense should tip you off at the last instant as the bullet races towards you. 

Pretty much my interpretation as well.

It is a roll without most of the Penalties and being in the "Special" Sense Group, Sense Affecting powers targetting it are rare and pretty expensive.*

Normal Senses can be used as complimentary rolls. And Enhanced Senses does affect DS.

*Specifically "Invisibility (Danger Sense)" would cost either 10 base or +5 (cost of an Entire Non-Targetting Sense Group).

6 minutes ago, Toxxus said:

You're partially correct in that a lot of conventional dangers can be perceived with normal senses as well as Danger Sense.  But there could be many dangers that are simply impossible to detect without some sort of super-sense.

And in those cases the Senseroll would act Complimentary to the Danger Sense.

6 minutes ago, Sean Waters said:

  

 

I was going to hold off on a costs discussion until later, but...

 

10 Fighting Multipower, 10-point reserve

2v 1) +2 OCV (10 APs)

2v 2) +2 DCV (10 APs)

1f 3) Blast +1d6, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½) (7 APs)

1f 4) Hand-To-Hand Attack +1d6, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½) (7 APs); Hand-To-Hand Attack (-¼)

 

16 Points total

 

That is significantly better than 2 x 8 point levels in almost all cases because the DCV will apply to all attacks and is persistent. 

That is pretty much teh writeup I ended up with too. Except it those 2 damage slots were something called "Generic Damage Classes".

Unless you invent a new abstracted construct for it, you need at least 4 different attack power slots.